Dem Rep Al Green: Donald Trump Can Be Impeached Without Committing a Crime

Democrat Al Green says that President Donald Trump could be impeached without having committed a crime.

In a Thursday interview with Democracy Now, Green argued that the President has two options, resign or be impeached on the grounds he is “harming society.”

Green said:

“This is a very sad time in the history of our country. This is not something that I enjoy talking about, nor is it something that I would like to do. But I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that the president will have two options: One, he can resign from office, or, two, he can face impeachment. Impeachment is something that the Framers of the Constitution provided for a time such as this and a president such as Trump. The president does not have to commit a crime to be impeached. In fact, the president is not likely to be indicted, which means he’s not likely to be found guilty of a crime while he’s sitting, which means that if this comes before the House, it won’t come before the House as a president who has been found guilty, but rather as a president who is alleged to have committed certain offenses that are onerous to the Constitution and that harm society. And what this president is doing is harming society.”

Green proceeds to mention statements made by Michael Cohen’s lawyer saying that Donald Trump directed (Cohen) to commit a crime by making payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal for the principal purpose of influencing an election.

He says that Trump may never face any charges for such actions “but he can be impeached for it.”

The Democrat would continue:

“It’s my opinion that you cannot allow an unfit president to continue to cause harm to society. Let’s take just a few examples quickly. When those persons in Charlottesville were saying “blood and soil,” “Jews will not replace us,” many of them worked in places that probably serve Jews and minority persons. One can only imagine what would happen to the food of a person who is of African ancestry who is being served by one of those bigots, one of those racists. Let’s take the example of what happened at the border with those babies that were being separated from their mothers by virtue of a policy instituted by this president. That was a form of bigotry that is intolerable. We don’t have to allow the president to continue to harm our society. The Framers of the Constitution contemplated that there would be a president who would do things even more horrible than this, but also things as horrible as this, such that that president could be removed from office. And the Framers concluded that no person should be above the law and that the president should not be beyond justice. It is justice that we seek for the people of this country, and the president should be impeached. He doesn’t have to commit a crime, only has to have his case brought before the House of Representatives, and 218 people decide that he has committed an impeachable act.”

Al Green was the first Democrat to introduce articles of impeachment against president Trump, a move that fizzled out quickly due to the congressman decision to let the action expire.

President Trump addressed impeachment on Thursday in an interview with Fox and Friends in which he was asked if he thought Democrats would move to file articles of impeachment should they take over control of the House and Senate come November.

The president would respond by saying that he has done a fine job as president, while also adding: “If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor. Because without this thinking [points to head] you would see, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”

Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer on Thursday went on the offensive, blaming the “Washington establishment” for failing to seriously pursue impeaching President Trump, an initiative he has been pressing Congress on for months.

“But what happened on Tuesday was that two of his closest associates were certified by our justice system as criminals, and one of them implicated Mr. Trump directly,” Steyer said told CBS, referring to Cohen and Manafort.

Steyer, the founder of a pro-impeachment group Need To Impeach, said that “what we’re seeing is a Washington establishment that for its own reasons does not want to deal with the most political truth in our nation” — that being removing a “reckless, dangerous and lawless” president.

Trump attorney Rudy Gulliani painted a grim picture of what impeachment of the sitting president would look like when he said on Thursday that Americans would “revolt” if Trump was impeached “for political reasons.”